Aug 6, 2009

Okay, BEFORE you watch the behind the scenes video, spend at least 3 minutes (180 seconds) studying this image and writing a comment below about how this photograph was made. I don't care what your background is or whether you're a photographer, artist, engineer, teacher, millionaire or of some other background; it doesn't matter, use your imagination here folks (ideas could be centered around: camera settings, lens length, instructions to athlete, lighting, time of day, location, elaborate set-up or not, photographers position, post-processing, studio work, compositing, CGI....etc.). Don't limit yourself and remember you're on your honor to look, study and write a comment before pressing play...! If your ideas come closest what took place on the shoot, an 8x12, signed print is coming your way!- Prints here: http://kevinwinzeler.com (*note- if you were on the shoot, hold the comments :)

The NEXT blog entry will delve into the specifics behind this photo shoot, from diagrams, to lighting ratios, to an analysis of what I liked and also what I would have done differently looking back on this shoot a year later. Stay tuned....

9 comments:

I honestly have NO idea where I would begin to get a shot like this. HELLO! I can't get my camera wet!

Here are a few things I think you might have done.Fast shutter to catch all the water action.Photographer in the water with swimmer. Swimmer wasn't actually swimming.Asked him to open mouth for big breath and move just single arm.Morning photo shoot. I'm not convinced this is just natural light but it might be.There was probably some sharpening done and color/contrast tweaking done in Photoshop.

My guess is the photographer is in a boat holding the camera close to the water. One flash in front of the swimmer, and one behind both fastened to the boat. Fast shutter speed to freeze the motion with a wide angle lens.

I agree with the others, a faster shutter speed to catch all of the water details. Being a triathlete, I assume he's starting his race, I like the picture a lot. You can see his eyes looking at the camera. And it looks like the sun is shinning on him in two places, from the left and the right. If you were going for a triathlon type picture, you should have others swimming around him with the same caps on, then you know they're in the same divison. :)

In Utah Lake, in the morning. You're in the water with two different flashes attached to the boat. The shutter had to be fast to keep it crisp, but there's a slight delay to blur some of the droplets to show motion/speed.

Instructions were to look intense/mad and to hold his head a bit out of the water so you weren't getting just half of his face.

Alright, I figured you were sitting on the back of a motorboat (I know which lake, but I figure that's unfair advantage!) You were not using a fish-eye lens, or any other lens that would manipulate the picture as it looks proportional to the angle. There used a flash, and probably were wearing flip-flops? Ha ha. The swimmer was given directions to swim past at a slight angle and your camera was right above the water.

Here is my very amateur analysis. Knowing you, you are probably down in the water a few metres from the swimmer. You have a couple of off camera flashes to provide the lighting. The swimmer was instructed to swim towards you and continue on a short distance beyond you so that as swimmer passed by you could capture him/her in fullstride.

Here is my very amateur analysis. Knowing you, you are probably down in the water a few metres from the swimmer. You have a couple of off camera flashes to provide the lighting. The swimmer was instructed to swim towards you and continue on a short distance beyond you so that as swimmer passed by you could capture him/her in fullstride.